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My Favorite Place on Earth

December 19, 2016 by Jon Brown 3 Comments

One question I get asked all the time when talking about my travels is “What’s your favorite place?”

There honestly a lot of favorites, but there is one place I hold above all others. I found it on my very first trip to Asia thanks to my circus/fire friends I met along the way of that first trip. In fact for me, that favorite place is a place within a place, it’s a very specific few square feet at a restaurant on the rocks perched between three idyllic bays.

I’ve returned to that very spot many times over the last 10 years and it’s slowly changed.

No Roads (2007)

On my first visit there in January of 2007 there were two ways to make it to these beaches. One, the one everyone takes, is a 15 minute ride in a long tail boat. When the ocean was calm, this was no problem, but regularly the ocean is not-calm and occasionally it was far too rough for the boats from Haad Rin to even try. The alternative route was a 2 hour hike in the jungle on a un-maintained trail. Very few took the later, unless left no other option and there was no road.

Thailand Long Tail Boat with decorative painting
One of the many long tail boats the ply between Haad Rin and Haad Yuan
Waves picking up and spraying the walkway. In major storms this walkway has been damaged and rebuilt.
After hours of waiting for a lull they went for it… all-hands survived, but everyone was pretty soaked as well. Hope you didn’t have any electronics in those bags…
Walking between the bays on a beautiful day
Typical Thailand Long Tail boat. Some of the bungalow’s have slightly wider boats, but this is usually it.
The third, and smallest bay, Haad Why-nam.
The view towards The Sanctuary Resort on Haad Tian from the ridge between Haad Tian and Haad Why-nam
The view towards Haad Yuan from the ridge between Haad Tian and Haad Why-nam
The mythical road (2013)

Years later a “4×4 only” road started getting cut through the jungle. Motorcycles at first could make it and then very adventurous Jeeps. It wasn’t used regularly though and certainly wasn’t open to the public. Only those that owned the bungalow operations along the beach used it, and even then it was regularly too muddy for any vehicle to make it though. The boats were still how everyone got in and out, and how nearly everything THING from food to building materials got in and out. At this point the road was still half myth and many people hoped it would never become commonly usable.

Bamboo Hut Restaurant on the rocks above Haad Yuan, viewed from the water
The gazebo in front of Bamboo Hut on the rocks above Haad Yuan
Sunrise from my room at Barcelona, Haad Yuan, Ko Pha-Ngan Thailand
The view out my front door. Barcelona, Haad Yuan, Ko Pha-Ngan Thailand
Everything comes in by boat, from cushions to concrete.
Beam Bungalows on Haad Thian, up the hill a bit means they get cellphone signals (the beach doesn’t)
Sunrise from my room at Barcelona, Haad Yuan, Ko Pha-Ngan Thailand
The view towards The Sanctuary Resort on Haad Tian from the ridge between Haad Tian and Haad Why-nam
The Road (2014)

Today the steepest and worst parts of the road have been paved, although it’s still only passable by high clearance 4×4 vehicles and not open to the public. There is a 4×4 pickup truck taxi service that operates making daily trips in and out. Perhaps the only good thing is there is at least now competition with the boats which had more than tripled in price over the years.  Now it’s 200-300THB for either the boat or the truck, which is a bit lower than the last days of the boats being the only option. The bad is more people, more all-night parties, more trash…

The times they are a-changin…

The location iss on Haad Yuan, Haad Tian and Haad Why-Nam beaches on Ko Pha-Ngan, Thailand. I said there was a specific place there though, and it’s a table (two really) at Bamboo Hut restaurant. It’s a place where I can sit while eat the most delicious pumpkin curry, drinking mocha or mango shakes, work or gaze out onto the beautiful sra for hours. 10 years ago this spot even had “wi-fi”. Wi-fi is in quotes because back then it was a connection grabbed by a 64 Kbps connection grabbed by a dish antenna (find it in the photo). That connection was shared by everyone that could get on, imagine 10 people sharing a single 1980’s dial-up connection that frequently just stopped working for hours at a time. Fun! Now, you can get a decent 3G cellphone signal and tether to your own connection. Some providers I think now even hit the spot with 4G/LTE although that’s spotty. Still my favorite place… but I’m looking for a new place, one like this one was 10 years ago 😀

Sitting here, drinking smoothies, eating curry… couldn’t be happier.
Laptop, Mocha Shake, Pumpkin Curry… Billion Dollar View… this is it, this is my happy place

My favorite part about people asking me this question of my favorite place though is finding out about where their favorite place is and why… So!

Where is your favorite place? Why is it special to you?

Filed Under: Journal, Photography, Travel, Travel Photography Tagged With: Haad Tian, Haad Yuan, Koh Phangan, Thailand

Why I don’t post my photos online anymore

January 11, 2014 by Jon Brown 7 Comments

My first trip through Thailand and Asia I was a prolific photo taker. I love those photos and that trip. Some of those photos we’re really good and I still reference back to them. At the time I posted a most of my best photos to Flickr so friends, family and strangers could enjoy them along with me. That experience was priceless and I wouldn’t take it back.

For years afterward though I would also get requests to use them from various entities. My stated policy was they were copyrighted and you needed to ask to use them. My unspoken policy was pretty simple, if someone wanted to use a photo for commercial use, they needed to pay for using it. If someone wanted to use it for non-profit use I’d make a decision on a case by case basis. A few did actually got permission to use photos like this one:

Fortunate are...

Which was used by: “National Council for Geographic Education (www.ncge.org), an non-profit, educational organization for geography teachers.

Today I was searching for photos and links to share with a friend about Haad Yuan, Koh Phangan, Thailand (my favorite place on earth). The first link that came up was this site:

stolen-haad-yuan-photo

Which stole my photo from here:
haad-yuan-koh-phangan-bamboo-boardwalk

That’s a photo I took in 2006/7 of my friends Andrea and MK walking onto the bamboo board walk just below Bamboo Hut Restaurant and headed toward Haad Yuan. Ironically, I’m actually headed to just that spot in 2 days to SEE that very same amazing Andrea and SparkCircus for the first time since that trip.

Obviously you can easily find a bunch of my fire dancer photography I took on that same trip appropriated without my consent all over the internet as well. Often in collection like this one (attributed at least, but linked, and not with my permission) https://wwwXfunzugXcom/index.php/artwork/captivating-fire-dancing-photos.html. I actually think the attribution here is because I a while ago I contacted a site with a collection much like this (I think Hong Kait) and they added the attribution and link. I suspect this site just copied that site and stripped the links.

So…  all this to say that, THIS, is why I stopped posting photos in mass online.  I keep saying that I’ll find a way to easily watermark them and upload them, but it’s such a hassle and keeps me from doing so.  I’d really like to retroactively watermark everything I uploaded to Flickr in the past, but I’ve never found a way short of manually replacing the photos.  It’s not that watermarked photos won’t get taken without permission, it’s that they’re less likely to be taken and even if they are taken there is “something” tying them back to me.  It’s not “control” but it is some small thread of connection to the source that makes them not feel quite so completely lost into the digital turbulence of the internet.

Do you care about repurposing of your images?  Do you have stories to share? Do you have a magically way to retroactively add watermarks to Flickr?

Filed Under: Journal, Photography, Travel, Travel Photography Tagged With: Copyright, Haad Yuan, Koh Phangan, Thailand